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Complex Inferential Processes Are Needed for Implicature Comprehension, but Not for Implicature Production

Upon hearing “Some of Michelangelo’s sculptures are in Rome,” adults can easily generate a scalar implicature and infer that the intended meaning of the utterance corresponds to “Some but not all Michelangelo’s sculptures are in Rome.” Comprehension experiments show that preschoolers struggle with t...

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Autores principales: Mognon, Irene, Sprenger, Simone A., Kuijper, Sanne J. M., Hendriks, Petra
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813936/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33469432
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.556667
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author Mognon, Irene
Sprenger, Simone A.
Kuijper, Sanne J. M.
Hendriks, Petra
author_facet Mognon, Irene
Sprenger, Simone A.
Kuijper, Sanne J. M.
Hendriks, Petra
author_sort Mognon, Irene
collection PubMed
description Upon hearing “Some of Michelangelo’s sculptures are in Rome,” adults can easily generate a scalar implicature and infer that the intended meaning of the utterance corresponds to “Some but not all Michelangelo’s sculptures are in Rome.” Comprehension experiments show that preschoolers struggle with this kind of inference until at least 5 years of age. Surprisingly, the few studies having investigated children’s production of scalar expressions like some and all suggest that production is adult-like already in their third year of life. Thus, children’s production of implicatures seems to develop at least 2 years before their comprehension of implicatures. In this paper, we present a novel account of scalar implicature generation in the framework of Bidirectional Optimality Theory: the Asymmetry Account. We show that the production–comprehension asymmetry is predicted to emerge because the comprehension of some requires the hearer to consider the speaker’s perspective, but the production of some does not require the speaker to consider the hearer’s perspective. Hence, children’s comprehension of scalar expressions, but not their production of scalar expressions, is predicted to be related to their theory of mind development. Not possessing fully developed theory of mind abilities yet, children thus have difficulty in comprehending scalar expressions such as some in an adult-like way. Our account also explains why variable performance is found in experimental studies testing children’s ability to generate scalar implicatures; moreover, it describes the differences between children’s and adults’ implicature generation in terms of their ability to recursively apply theory of mind; finally, it sheds new light on the question why the interpretation of numerals does not require implicature generation.
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spelling pubmed-78139362021-01-18 Complex Inferential Processes Are Needed for Implicature Comprehension, but Not for Implicature Production Mognon, Irene Sprenger, Simone A. Kuijper, Sanne J. M. Hendriks, Petra Front Psychol Psychology Upon hearing “Some of Michelangelo’s sculptures are in Rome,” adults can easily generate a scalar implicature and infer that the intended meaning of the utterance corresponds to “Some but not all Michelangelo’s sculptures are in Rome.” Comprehension experiments show that preschoolers struggle with this kind of inference until at least 5 years of age. Surprisingly, the few studies having investigated children’s production of scalar expressions like some and all suggest that production is adult-like already in their third year of life. Thus, children’s production of implicatures seems to develop at least 2 years before their comprehension of implicatures. In this paper, we present a novel account of scalar implicature generation in the framework of Bidirectional Optimality Theory: the Asymmetry Account. We show that the production–comprehension asymmetry is predicted to emerge because the comprehension of some requires the hearer to consider the speaker’s perspective, but the production of some does not require the speaker to consider the hearer’s perspective. Hence, children’s comprehension of scalar expressions, but not their production of scalar expressions, is predicted to be related to their theory of mind development. Not possessing fully developed theory of mind abilities yet, children thus have difficulty in comprehending scalar expressions such as some in an adult-like way. Our account also explains why variable performance is found in experimental studies testing children’s ability to generate scalar implicatures; moreover, it describes the differences between children’s and adults’ implicature generation in terms of their ability to recursively apply theory of mind; finally, it sheds new light on the question why the interpretation of numerals does not require implicature generation. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-01-05 /pmc/articles/PMC7813936/ /pubmed/33469432 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.556667 Text en Copyright © 2021 Mognon, Sprenger, Kuijper and Hendriks. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Mognon, Irene
Sprenger, Simone A.
Kuijper, Sanne J. M.
Hendriks, Petra
Complex Inferential Processes Are Needed for Implicature Comprehension, but Not for Implicature Production
title Complex Inferential Processes Are Needed for Implicature Comprehension, but Not for Implicature Production
title_full Complex Inferential Processes Are Needed for Implicature Comprehension, but Not for Implicature Production
title_fullStr Complex Inferential Processes Are Needed for Implicature Comprehension, but Not for Implicature Production
title_full_unstemmed Complex Inferential Processes Are Needed for Implicature Comprehension, but Not for Implicature Production
title_short Complex Inferential Processes Are Needed for Implicature Comprehension, but Not for Implicature Production
title_sort complex inferential processes are needed for implicature comprehension, but not for implicature production
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813936/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33469432
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.556667
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